Oil is oozing through the ocean near Kharg Island in the Strait of Hormuz, according to satellite photos released Friday, raising questions about the state of Iran’s central energy production hub located there.
Between May 6 and 8, the spill spread to an area of 20 square miles inside the channel, amounting to as much as 3,000 lost barrels of oil, reps for Orbital EOS, a global oil spill monitoring service told The New York Times.
It’s unclear what has caused the spill. The US has struck Kharg Island several times during its conflict with Iran, but the most recent actions took place in early April — long before the spill.
“Large volumes of crude [oil] stored in tankers are increasing spill risks. A possible rupture in the old undersea pipeline to Abuzar field is another source,” suggested Dalga Khatinoglu, who spoke as an Iranian energy expert to the Times.
Roughly 90% of Iran’s oil exports depart from the island, with China being one of the main purchasers.
Hundreds of oil tankers and other vessels carrying fertilizer and critical supplies out of the Persian Gulf have been bottlenecked since joint US-Israeli strikes began on Feb. 28.
Iran forced energy prices to surge globally after shutting the strait down shortly after the bombing commenced. At least one-fifth of the world’s supply of seaborne oil passes through it.
But Tehran’s oil has also been blockaded by US ships since April 13, with no Iranian-flagged vessels being allowed to transit the strait amid a tenuous cease-fire with American forces that started days before.
Nima Shokri, a professor of environmental engineering at the Hamburg University of Technology, also told the Times that “the naval blockade has likely pushed Iran’s oil system into a dangerous state.”
“Oil wells are not machines that can simply be switched off and restarted at will,” Shokri said.
Iran has broken the cease-fire several times. Most recently, US destroyers caught fire while sailing through the strait — with Trump downplaying the breach as “just a love tap.”
Just two ships sailed through the strait in the past 24 hours, according to the website hormuzstraitmonitor.com, which has been tracking vessels exiting and entering the Gulf.
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